Mercedes' Maybach Of The Future Won't Fit In A Garage

Mercedes unveiled its vision for the future: an all-electric luxury coupe that won’t leave much room in the average American garage. The Vision Mercedes - Maybach 6, which debuted at Monterey Car Week in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Thursday, is a 738-horsepower roadster that runs on a battery and four electric motors.

The all-wheel drive coupe reaches 60 mph in less than four seconds and is designed to travel more than 200 miles on a single charge. The futuristic 2+2 seater has gullwing doors and a low-slung silhouette that measures 18.5 feet in length, reminiscent of a 1970s-era land yacht. “We have the opportunity to be crazy once in a while,” said Dietmar Exler, president and chief executive of Mercedes-Benz USA.

The Maybach concept’s long hood and oversized grille exaggerate the coupe’s proportions and manage to make the concept look both retro and futuristic. “It’s about sex appeal at the end of the day,” Gorden Wagener, head of design at Daimler AG, told a crowd at the car’s debut. “It’s about what we as humans think is attractive.”

Notably, the curved dashboard inside the Maybach includes a traditional steering wheel. “This is a car that you want to drive yourself, so we gave it a steering wheel,” Wagener said, possibly invoking the Vision Next 100 concept that BMW unveiled in Munich earlier this year for the brand’s centennial. That sedan, which BMW said could be reality in three decades, has a retractable steering wheel so that a driver can enable autopilot mode if he or she wants to take a break.